FinInG – Finite Incidence Geometry

• John Bamberg (University of Western Australia)
• Anton Betten (Colorado State University, Fort Collins)
• Philippe Cara (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
• Jan De Beule (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
• Michel Lavrauw (Sabancı Üniversitesi, and Università degli Studi di Padova)
• Max Neunhoeffer (University of St. Andrews)

This package provides:

• functionality to create and explore finite incidence structures, such as finite projective spaces, finite classical polar spaces, generalised polygons, coset geometries, finite affine spaces, and many more;

• functionality to explore algebraic varieties in finite projective and finite affine spaces;

• functionality that deals with the automorphism groups of incidence structures, and functionality integrating these automorphism groups with the group theoretical capabilities of GAP;

• functionality to explore various morphisms between finite incidence structures.

For further information see:

http://www.fining.org

INSTALLATION AND DEPENDENCIES

FinInG requires the following packages: GAPDoc, GenSS, forms, GRAPE, orb, io, and cvec. The DESIGN package is not required to load FinInG, but is needed to use some particular functions for generalised polygons. The required packages are all available through the website of GAP, and are usually installed by default. However, for some of these packages, compilation might still be required. The complete installation procedure is explained in the INSTALL file, and in the FinInG manual. Here we continue with the summary for the experienced or impatient user.

Just unpack one of the archives in the “pkg” subdirectory of your GAP installation. The archive is available in several formats:

fining-x.y.tgz  
fining-x.y.zip 

Unpacking generates a subdirectory “fining”. If the dependencies are satisfied, you can load the package by typing in the GAP command line “LoadPackage(“fining”);”. All documentation and examples are included.

Have a lot of fun!

The authors,

John Bamberg, Anton Betten, Philippe Cara, Jan De Beule, Michel Lavrauw and Max Neunhoeffer.